streets, empty cellars, dim, dim alleys. They’d never find him there! Run now, run before he was overtaken!
But he was not being pursued. Bheel still stood on the patio, transfixed with horror. He heard the Arrillian’s terrified cry “Dheb Tyn-Dall...!” And then a rope shot out and grabbed him by the ankles. Not a rope really, a green something, and there were others around his arms, his chest, his hips, wrapping him in their sticky green embrace. The Guardians! He tried to cry out but one of the verdant fronds enveloped his throat so tightly he could not utter a sound. The innocent green things of the Grove were vigilant guardians indeed. They seemed to be merely holding him immobile, but Tyndall realized with sick horror that their pressure was increasing, so little at a time, but so steadily.
And something was happening out there in the sunlight too. The creature had convulsively grasped the branch of a bush and was clinging weakly to it, great tremors wracking its body. It seemed to be struggling, suffering, dying . . . even as he was. In his agony, Tyndall laughed.
“A Time! A Time!” The voice came from the patio. Tyndall saw Bheel throw himself face down on the floor, covering his eyes with his hands. He heard the cry echoed within the palace, and then like a mighty roar outside in the city. And then there was silence, silence broken only by the sound of his own breathing as he dragged his tortured lungs across his shattered ribs.
He saw the Bug give a great heave, and then it seemed to split open, the entire skin splitting in a dozen places and a hand . . . A HAND reached from within that dying hulk and grasped the bush to which it clung. A white slender hand on a fragile wrist, and then the arm was free, a woman’s arm, a beautiful arm.
Tyndall began, dimly, and too late, to understand.
A leg kicked free . . . the slender ankle . . . the amply fleshed thigh.
Tyndall clung to consciousness doggedly. The Guardian was crushing the last dregs of life out of him now, and even the pain seemed to recede. His mind was very, very clear. So that was it. A word once heard in a long forgotten classroom, and then the scientists of the expedition. Metamorphosis . . . he had meant to ask them what . . . but he remembered now . . . what it meant. A passing from one form into another . . . . Had he failed a biology test once because he didn’t know what metamorphosis meant . . . dimly . . . dimly . . . he saw . . .
The last thing Tyndall ever saw was the Priestess Lhyreesa as she stepped out of the empty hulk, kicking it away with a disdainful toe. Breathless from her ordeal, she sank to the grass, her breasts heaving with exhaustion.
She sat there for a few minutes in the sunlight, then she tossed her head and spread her long raven hair out on her shoulders, the better to dry it in the waning sun.
Two Plus Two Makes Crazy
by Walt Sheldon
Walt Sheldon is bitter-bright in this imaginative short satire of Man’s sell-out by a group of staunch believers in the infallibility of numbers.
The Computer could do no wrong. Then it was asked a simple little question by a simple little man.
THE LITTLE MAN had a head like an old-fashioned light bulb and a smile that seemed to say he had secrets from the rest of the world. He didn’t talk much, just an occasional “Oh,” “Mm” or “Ah.” Krayton figured he must be all right, though. After all he’d been sent to Computer City by the Information Department itself, and his credentials must have been checked in a hundred ways and places.
“Essentially each computer is the same,” said Krayton, “but adjusted to translate problems into the special terms of the division it serves.”
Krayton had a pleasant, well-behaved impersonal voice. He was in his thirties and mildly handsome. He considered himself a master of the technique of building a career in Computer City—he knew how to stay within the limits of directives and regulations and still make decisions, or rather to relay computer decisions that kept his responsibility to a minimum.
Now Krayton spoke easily and freely to the little man. As public liaison officer he had explained the computer system hundreds of times. He knew it like a tech manual.
“But is there any real central control, say in case of a breakdown or something of that sort?” The little man’s voice was dry as lava ash, dry as the wastes between and beyond the cities. Tanter, was the name he’d given—Mr. Tanter. His contact lenses were so thick they made his eyes seem to bulge grotesquely. He had a faint stoop and wore a black tunic which made his look like one of the reconstructed models of prehistoric birds called crows that Krayton had seen in museums.
“Of course, of course,” said Krayton, answering the question. “It’s never necessary to use the All circuit. But we could very easily in case of a great emergency.”
“The All circuit? What is that?” Mr. Tanter asked.
Krayton gestured and led the little man down the long control bank. Their steps made precise clicks on the layaplast floor. The stainless steel walls threw back tinny echoes. The chromium molding glistened, always pointing the way—the straight and mathematical way. They were in the topmost section of the topmost building of Computer City. The several hundred clean, solid, wedding-cake structures of the town could be seen from the polaflex window.
“The All circuit puts every machine in the city to work on any selection-problem that’s fed into our master control here. Each machine will give its answer in its own special terms, but actually they will all work on the same problem. To use a grossly simple example, let us say we wish to know the results of two-and-two, but we wish to know it in terms of total security. That is, we wish to know that two-plus-two means twice as many nourishment units for the Department of Foods, twice as many weapons for the Department of War, but is perhaps not necessarily true according to the current situational adjustment in the Department of Public Information.
“At any rate, we would set up our problem on the master, pushing the button Two, then the button Plus, and the button Two again as on a primitive adding machine. Then we would merely throw the All switch. A short time later the total answer to our problem would be relayed back from every computer, and the cross-comparison factors canceled out, so that we would have the result in terms of the familiar Verdict Statement. And, as everyone knows, the electronically filed Verdict Statementsmake the complete record of directives for the behavior of our society.”
“Very interesting,” said Mr. Tanter, the little crow-like man. He blinked rapidly, stared at the switch marked All that Krayton was pointing out to him.
Krayton now folded his hands in front of his official gold-and-black tunic, looked up into the air and rocked gently back and forth on his heels as he talked. He was really talking to himself now although he seemed to address Tanter. “You can see that the Computer System is quite under our control in spite of what these rebellious, underground groups say.”
“Underground groups?” asked Mr. Tanter mildly. Just his left eye seemed to blink this time. And the edge of his mouth gave the veriest twitch.
“Oh, you know,” said Krayton, “the organization that calls itself the Prims. Prim for Primitive. They leave little cards and pamphlets around damning the Computer System. I saw one the other day. It had a big title splashed across it: our new tyrant—the computer. The article complained that some of the new labor and food regulations were the
